Security in gated communities is a concern for residents today. With rapid urbanisation happening across the major cities of India, the current trend is of people moving in to gated communities. And with this increasing shift towards gated communities, a sense of communal living is being achieved but a sense of security is falling well short of expectations.

Moreover, with e-commerce, the entire dynamics of shopping has changed where one can sit in the comfort of one’s home and order just about anything at the click of a button. This has meant that home deliveries have increased which has led to a substantial increase in the number of external footfalls, thereby again raising the question of security.

If you look at the security solutions that are available in the market today, they are in the form of access cards, biometrics, car stickers and so on, but they are all disjointed solutions which are not connected in any way.

Having themselves lived in gated communities and experienced the problem of security first hand, a group of four people left their high-flying corporate careers and came up with the concept of myGate in end of 2015.

Vijay Arisetty, one of the co-founders of myGate said, “Additional security guards come at a price of at least Rs 25,000 to 30,000 per person and associations don’t have that kind of budget. So, we thought of how we can solve this problem using technology. That’s where myGate came into the picture.”

What is myGate?

myGate is a mobile-based security management solution for gated premises. It was launched in the market in late 2016 in Bengaluru and aims to revolutionise the safety and security of gated communities and make security solutions seamless.

myGate estimates show that there are more than 1,00,000 gated communities in India with 35 million residents. myGate is currently installed within several hundred gated communities built by popular builders like Sobha, Prestige, Purvankara and Salarpuria. More than 32,000 guards in Bengaluru are already well-versed with the myGate security solution and are using it.

The founding team consists of Vijay Arisetty, an ex-IAF pilot and Shaurya Chakra awardee who also worked at Goldman Sachs, Abhishek Kumar, former VP at Goldman Sachs, Shreyans Daga, an IIT-ISB alumnus and Vivaik Bhardwaj, also an ex-IAF pilot and former Director at Google.

Why use myGate?

Security at gated communities has long followed the conventional “man-guarding”, or the paper and pen system. The process is inefficient and error prone, making the life of security guards difficult. In addition, authentication of residents, visitors, support staff is a huge challenge.

Despite healthy investments in physical infrastructure like access cards, boom barriers, landline telecom, residential premises are unable to keep track of the various vehicle and people movements.

Compared to the traditional means of handling security at gated communities via registers and landline telecom, myGate has automated and digitised all the tasks at the gate for the security. Moreover, the system is interactive and provides real time information of all the activities at the gate concerning each flat. myGate lets the resident authorise, validate and manage all the visitors, from the milkman to the maid and the plumber.

On Thursday, myGate announced that it has raised Rs 16 crore in its first round of funding, led by Prime Venture Partners. Since its launch in Bengaluru in 2016, myGate has validated 24 million visits through their mobile app. The company plans to use the funds to invest in technology across the top seven cities in India, including Hyderabad, Pune and Delhi NCR within the next two years.

Shreyans Daga, CTO and co-founder of myGate said, “From here on, the intent is to build our client base in Bengaluru and use the funds to expand to other cities. Within the next two years, we want to get 2 million residents.”